Chapter Nineteen #2
His hands slid under my ass and dug into my flesh like my shorts didn’t exist. The pain turned me on. Why? I don’t know. It just did. I kissed him. Our tongues warred as he moaned into my mouth before devouring the skin along my neck to the swell of my breasts exposed along my low-cut shirt.
“Show me,” I whispered. “Show me your dirty mouth.” Releasing him, I leaned back.
He rocked forward, dropping to his knees as he slipped his thumb under my panties. “I’m going to fuck you, Lake.”
I closed my eyes, arching my back. “Why?” I breathed out.
“Because I love you …” His voice dropped to something so deep and raspy, almost painful.
“And?” I moaned, rocking my pelvis into his touch.
Two of his fingers slid inside me as he crawled over my body, pressing his lips to my ear. “And you’re mine, so I’ll fuck you when, where, and how I want.”
“Yesss …” I seethed, reaching behind me, bracing my hands on the chair as he got me off with nothing more than his hand between my legs and his dirty mouth at my ear.
CAGE
Lake nudged me with her foot. The only thing she loved more than my indoor pool was the theater room. I thought she was joking about her Netflix addiction. She wasn’t.
I pulled off my headphones. She watched Sons of Anarchy on the big screen while I watched game footage from the previous season on my laptop.
“What is it, sexy?”
She bit her thumbnail, a gesture I’d come to recognize as her way of getting the courage to ask me something important.
“I have a photoshoot in L.A. for a fitness magazine. Since it’s so close to the Fourth of July, I’m going to fly to Tahoe to spend the holiday with the fam. Wanna meet me in Tahoe? Wanna meet my fam?”
I shut my computer. “Your fam, huh?”
She nodded, biting her nail again.
“All of your family?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure yet if Luke, Jess, and Grant will be there. I hope so.”
I wanted to be with Lake and meet her parents, I just wasn’t ready to see Jessica—Jillian. The memories of my father would come flooding back.
“I’ll see.”
“You’ll see? What does that mean? Do you have plans in the next three days you haven’t mentioned?”
I shrugged. “Not sure yet. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“‘Lake, I have plans, sorry.’ or ‘Lake, I’d love to go.’ I get those responses, but I don’t get the ‘not sure yet.’ Are you waiting for a better offer?”
“No, I just … I …” Closing my eyes, I shook my head.
“Please don’t let this be about ‘Jillian.’”
“And if it is?”
She sat up. “It’s not allowed be about Jillian or Jessica or your dad or my brother. That is over, and I don’t mean it as any disrespect to you or your father’s memory. I just want it to be Lake Jones introducing the man that she loves to her family.”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“What do you mean you don’t know what happened?”
Setting my computer aside, I stood, pacing the room, hands on my hips, head down.
“I mean I don’t know about Jessica Day. When she called me, she offered to tell me everything, but I didn’t want to know how she ended up in our lives or why she was leaving.
I only wanted … only needed to know one thing. ”
“What was that?” Lake whispered.
“If she’d really loved my father.”
Lake stood and walked toward the door.
“Don’t you want to know what she said?” I called, hating the anger in my voice because I really wasn’t mad at her.
“No.” She kept her back to me, pausing at the door.
“Why not?”
“Because I already know.”
“Then tell me what you think she said.”
“I’m not doing this.”
I chased after her. “It’s because you don’t know. I bet she never told you or your brother.”
“I’m going home. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset! I just want to know what you think she said.”
Lake hurried into the bedroom and grabbed her overnight bag, shoving her stuff in as fast as she could.
“Tell me.”
She ignored me. I grabbed her arm as she tried to walk past me. The look of shock on her face when her eyes flitted between me and my hold on her felt like a knife in my heart. It was a look like she didn’t recognize me.
I released her; she didn’t have to ask.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because it shouldn’t matter.” She opened the front door.
“It matters to me!”
Her head hung in defeat. I felt like every single word I spoke was a sucker punch to her, but something so deep inside of me needed to know. It was a part of myself I didn’t recognize—a part I couldn’t control.
“She told you she loved your father. That’s what she told you.
She told you she didn’t regret one second with him.
And you believed her, yet you hated her for finding happiness on the opposite side of your father’s grave.
You hated him for choosing to spend his final days with her.
You hated yourself for being too young and scared to do anything about his situation. ”
Lake turned. “Does that cover it for you? Will it help you sleep at night to know that my family not only lost her, but in some ways we never got her all back because she gave a part of herself to your father? Does it make you feel good to rub it in my face?”
When she blinked, tears trailed down her cheeks, and I was the bastard of all bastards.
“You don’t want the story. You don’t want anyone to come along and disrupt your memories, but you’re A-fucking-OK with digging up my past, a past you don’t even completely understand because Jessica …
Jillian has been this no-go subject for us, and if I can’t tell you that she was in a wedding dress, getting ready to walk down the aisle when I was on my way to the hospital, and that I woke three months later to not only the news of my leg and Ben, but that my brother didn’t get married because of my accident and that she ‘committed suicide’ after her parents were murdered …
if I can’t tell you that…” she batted away more tears and her voice cracked “…then you’ll never understand that my greatest disability has nothing to do with my missing limb.
It’s the sleepless nights and the nightmares and the need to move on with my life and find something that makes me feel like I’m the one who deserved to live. ”
“Lake …” I moved toward her.
She shook her head and stepped out the door.
“I don’t want your pity, and I don’t want your apologies.
I just wanted to spend the Fourth of July with all the people I love most in this world.
But you’ve ruined that for me because somehow our losses in life have become a competition.
Well … you win. Sorry your dad died. Have a nice holiday. ”